Editor’s Highlights | Features
11th Apr 2012
The Hunger Games Love Triangle: Why I’m Not Convinced
Why does everyone think that The Hunger Games was about a love triangle?
Given the kind of men I’m attracted to, there was always a good chance I was going to miss out on The Hunger Games hunk-factor. As my long-time listener-sister pointed out: “You like men who look like men, and you can’t have a full-grown man dry-humping 16-year-old Katniss in a cave”.
So yeah, the love triangle wasn’t the reason I went from ambivalent to obsessed within the first ten pages of the Suzanne Collins trilogy.
With the recent release of The Hunger Games film, however, I’ve begun to suspect that my reading of the book is fundamentally out of step with the rest of humanity.
That not picking up on the love triangle as a major theme is the equivalent of not noticing that The Philosopher’s Stone has a fuck-ton of wizards in it.
Apparently Peeta or Gale (mullet-boy or clinically-forehead-deficient as the film cast them) is the overriding concern and a question of our times.
So where did I go wrong?
Taking the first book to avoid spoilers (and because there’s nothing to really spoil at that point), when we meet Katniss she is her family’s sole breadwinner. Her drippy little sister, Prim, is picked for the Hunger Games and will clearly drown in her own tears before she even enters the arena.
So Katniss volunteers to go and be killed so that Prim can carry on being imminently slappable, only to discover she will have to kill one of the only people who’s ever been kind to her; Peeta.
Her only chance at survival is to completely corrupt her natural instincts by killing everyone else and pretending to be in love with Peeta until she can kill him too. So far, so Malory Towers.
Obviously there is a love triangle (and if she has to choose it should be Peeta) but surely it doesn’t deserve to be placed quite so centre stage. It makes as much sense to suggest that this is actually a story about mental illness:
- If Katniss’s mother hadn’t become depressed when the girls father died Katniss might not have had to grow up so quickly. When Prim was selected she might not have reacted in the same way, not thought to volunteer in her place and the trilogy would have lasted about 100 words more before Prim impaled herself on a daisy.
- If Haymitch hadn’t become an alcoholic after his own victory in the arena the other candidates might not have underestimated the District 12 tributes and would have taken them out in the first few hours.
So, it actually makes no sense but surely this is the sign of an enjoyable read, that you can theorise about it to the most absurd, extreme end of three grande chai tea lattes. As opposed to the only intrigue on offer being whether Bella will crack onto the dead guy or the hairy guy…
With The Hunger Games you’ve got autonomy in the face of utilitarianism. The corruption of power. The value of human life. The growing resource and wealth gap in contemporary society.
I know this is tripping into the po-faced domain of readers with adult covers for their Harry Potter books and those who can only enjoy the Northern Lights as atheist grand-standing. But it’s not like this is sodding Twilight!
Can’t we all just agree that as a dominatrix of the forest Katniss should just make it with Cinna, and leave the love triangle festering away in the background where it belongs?
Beulah Devaney
YES YES YES! Thank you!
Likewise I fell in love with the books and devoured all three in the space of 4 days. Needless to say, I was supremely excited about the film and then more than just a little disappointed at Twilightification of the whole thing.
Having said that, I still hold the books in the highest regard. For me, the social commentary was the most important theme of the book but I think that’s the beauty of Collins’ writing. She can cram so many themes into the pages that there is literally something for everyone.
Thank you! Good to know I’m not alone on that one! Gale was in the first book for all of 15 pages, if that, and yet he’s still touted as one of the film’s major characters.
There was a love triangle? Seriously, I blanked all that out and saw a dystopian tale of a bleak materialistic world and the need for survival, or more importantly, rebellion that would eventually lead to revolution. This is as much about a love triangle as Handmaid’s Tale was about women not getting knocked up. Yes, there was some pandering to the Twilighters but I like to think that the aneamic love story is hiding the subversive element.
“This is as much about a love triangle as Handmaid’s Tale was about women not getting knocked up.” Ha! Spot on.
I guess the love triangle aspect has been played up a lot to rope in the Twilight set, but to me – and I think probably to most HG readers – these are stories about corruption, rebellion, survival and family.
love that description!
I agree with Niki. Not in that I didn’t notice Peeta-Gale-Katniss, but because the love triangle was pretty well woven into the plot. If you want to compare it with Twilight, you have to reduce things a LOT, you have to be too reductive for it to matter I think.
Because the book is about trauma: first from a culture that glorifies (and televises) violence, and next from the war that ensues. Collins is amazing when it comes to depicting the many different ways people young and old cope with the trauma of loss: from hopping over a fence to hunt illegal, to major depression, to alcoholism, to painting.
If you read the books in this way it accommodates all of the above, including a story about a girl who really isn’t sure how she feels about two boys that say they love her, not only because she’s 16 and constantly worrying about her next meal, but because she doesn’t want to fall in love and raise children into brutal existence she’s been left to struggle through herself.
That doesn’t mean I wasn’t completely upset about the ending of the book though. Can we talk about that sometime?
I entirely agree and I think it’s great that you brought this up. The book was conspicuous for not being a love triangle – it had all the ingredients but it steadfastly didn’t go there, which is significant. The film on the other hand, took every opportunity to go there.
We hardly learnt a thing about Gale in the film except that every time there was something going on between Peeta and Katniss there was a cut to him with some melancholy music – they didn’t even take the opportunity to cut to Gale with melancholy music at the times Katniss was facing death.
It’s a flaw and an important one because it’s philosophical.
You are so right about the way the film didn’t develop Gale at all! I think they did some really interesting things about the capitol (and the fact that Collins was involved made me think it was authentic) but all he got to do was sit around looking pained.
People tend to shrug things like this off as Hollywood needs a love story, something for the teenagers, etc but thousands of people already read and loved the books. Why should it be so acceptable for the film to completely re-appropriate the the central themes of the book this way but not actually develop an alternative?
Agreed! Although I thought both the book and film were aware of the love triangle aspect, but turned it on its head. The way readers and viewers want a romance to keep them reading/watching is actually integral to their murder strategy – but we do it anyway.
To be fair, Gale does recur quite a lot in Katniss’s thoughts and there is a bit of gratuitous snogging to keep the hormonal teens happy, particularly in the second book (I won’t say who with). But the beautiful thing about Hunger Games is that they’ve got bigger fish to fry, and so the boy trouble can jostle along with totalitarianism and celebrity culture and environment and family and survival and lots of other far more interesting issues.
Also, in this vein a Katniss Everdene Barbie has been announced, which shows just the most staggering lack of irony. Or maybe they just didn’t read the books.
Very happy to see so much support for this, especially after the reaction on the facebook page. You are so right about the love triangle (and the gratuitous kissing, although was I the only one expecting a little more pointless stripping off from the boys?).
On the subject of Katniss barbies there is an incredible amount of HG tat, verging on Captiol-esq levels of cluelessness but this is my favourite: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/the-hunger-games/articles/111571/title/katniss-everdeen-song
Thank you. The books are not about a “love triangle.” I think the only reason that’s mentioned is because of Twilight and our “need” for that type of conflict.
Katniss’ language and thoughts when reflecting on Gale is that of one missing her best friend. Thinking about “Gale’s velvet tread” when Peeta is clomping in the woods is not the thoughts of a love sick girl.
Being “destroyed” if Peeta was dead in book 2, that’s the thought of a girl in love.